Camille A. Farrington is a research associate (assistant professor) at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration (SSA) and the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR).

Dr. Farrington's research focuses on policy and practice in urban high school reform, particularly classroom instruction and assessment, academic rigor, academic failure, and the role of noncognitive factors in academic performance. In Dr. Farrington’s new book, Failing at School: Lessons for Redesigning Urban High Schools (2014, Teachers College Press), she argues that 120-year-old structures, policies, and practices for teaching and evaluating students—structures that are at the heart of the American high school—were designed to ensure that only the top academic performers advance to graduation. Combining historical research with two present-day studies of failing students and their teachers in three schools, the book documents how high schools systematically construct widespread student failure. Failing at School closes with practical recommendations for restructuring secondary education to serve goals of equity and excellence rather than selection and stratification. Dr. Farrington is also the lead author of Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners: The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School Performance (2012), a comprehensive research review that illustrates how noncognitive factors interact with school and classroom contexts to affect students’ academic achievement. She is Principal Investigator on two studies, the Becoming Effective Learners Survey Development Project and the 8/9 Teacher Network, both focused on better understanding the relationship between teacher practice, student noncognitive factors, and school success.

Throughout her work, Dr. Farrington draws on her fifteen years’ experience as a public high school teacher and National Board Certified Teacher Mentor. Prior to joining UEI, she also served on the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies faculty at the University of Washington, College of Education for three years.

Dr. Farrington received a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz, teacher certification from Mills College, and a Ph.D. in Policy Studies in Urban Education from the University of Illinois at Chicago.